Yesterday there was an explosion in Vancouver - this is a picture taken moments later by a Flickr user. Here is the set.
I have been wondering about how public radio and TV could deliver a much better local, national and international news service without spending money. A Twitter Club now makes a lot of sense. The New AP for a Social Media Age.
The Ohio primary might offer us a great opportunity to see how this might work in practice. The State is large - there are many stations - the stakes are huge for the country. What if Public Radio and NPR formed a Twitter Club as a stated experiment? I see the key cities as hubs - Columbus, Dayton, Cleveland etc. Each with their area club. Linked to each other and then processed through NPR and then linked with the nation - something like that.
Not only is Twitter cheap to roll out - you are capturing the network effect for free - but as we are seeing with the Bryant Park Project - it changes the relationship with the supporter of the station and the network. You bring in a core of members who work hard for you. Who are really unpaid staff. You create a much more healthy bond than the old blackmail relationship of pledge week.
The local station really wins here but also so does the entire network. Without any real costs, Ohio could become a real area network if the stations chose to go after the primary this way. Ohio could feed the nation.
We have enough evidence that this could work now.
We have seen the "Twitter Bowl" experiment where 2500 commented in real time on the ads. We have seen the excellent Job that Andy Carvin and NPR are doing for the large primaries such as Super Tuesday where they pulled in all the feeds and Twittered out the picture. We have seen Twitter become the fastest way to get breaking news. We have seen Twitter play a key role in Emergencies such as the fire in California and how the LAFD get their news in and out.
What I am seeing is a way for the many to inform the many in a way that most of the debate about "Citizen Journalism" missed. Don't many who think about citizen journalism imagine people like me in their pajamas (yes I am in them as I write this) acting as lesser pundit for the NYT.
What I am seeing is the new ability to get "Immediacy". It's the Hindenburg effect - it's one thing to get the news that the Hindenburg has crashed it is another to see the footage of the surprise and the emotion of the event - "Oh the Humanity!" That is what I mean by immediacy.
But what about the Trolls? The Trolls are everywhere. They infest YouTube (More on this later) Are not Trolls a product of Anonymity? I don't have any Trolls on Twitter. If people misbehave - I don't follow or I block them. Trolls get weeded out very quickly.
With Twitter, you of course get links - hence access to all other forms of media - such as images, video and longer comment.
The biggest risk is Twitter itself. Will it hold up?
Come on guys Pleeeease try this.
